Long extents of rectangular electrical bus bars are arranged within electrical busway sections for transporting multi-phase high current electric power through industrial establishments. One example of a thermally efficient electrical busway section is described within U.S. Pat. Ser. No. 122,863 filed Nov. 19, 1987 and entitled "Thermally Efficient Power Busway Housing". This Application is incorporated herein for reference purposes and should be reviewed for its description of the arrangement of the electrical bus bars within the busway housing.
U.S. Pat. Application Ser. No. 193,000 filed May 12, 1988 entitled "Thermally Efficient Splice Joint for Electrical Distribution Busway" describes a bolted busway joint wherein the splice plates within the joint are arranged for providing accurate spacing to receive the individual bus bars of adjoining busway systems. This Application is also incorporated herein for reference purposes.
When attempting to interconnect or disconnect between a pair of existing busway sections by means of a self-contained busway joint, some expansion clearance is necessary to compensate for variations in the position of the respective busway sections. One method of compensation, such as described within U.S. Pat. No. 3,559,148, utilizes horizontal slots on the sides of the busway sections with screws attached to the joint side walls. When the joint is inserted between adjacent slotted busway sections, the screws are moved within the slots to provide the necessary adjustment.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,489,846 discloses electric busway joints having similar slotted means for allowing thermal expansion of the busway sections.
One purpose of the instant invention therefore is to provide means on adjacent busway sections, integrally formed therein, for cooperating with integrally formed means on the busway joint to provide adjustment between the adjacent busway sections and the intervening busway joint to compensate for variation between the actual total length of a busway run and the planned total length of the busway run.